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b-hebrew - Re: Re[4]: JEDP (Melchizedek)

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  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Re[4]: JEDP (Melchizedek)
  • Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 09:50:39 -0700


> At 11.48 21/12/99 -0500, peter_kirk AT sil.org wrote:
> >Well, Dave, I accept that you know more than me about DSS. Perhaps
> >even Ian knows more than me. But the reference to omission of the
> >Melchizedek story was to its absence from the Genesis Apocryphon,
> >which Ian seems to have made a lot of.
>
> Peter, there are no fragments of Gen14 amongst the DSS (the first part of
> Genesis is particularly poorly represented). There is also no mention of
> Melchizedek in Jubilees (I have mentioned problems here elsewhere).
> However, the GenAp is the first occasion in which we come across the
> Melchizedek episode and not unstrangely it is a document in which the
> epithet "Most High God" is quite common.

Please notice what Ian has done here: first he asserts that Gen 14
is not represented; then he admits, in an aside so hopefully not too
many people will notice it, that the first part of Genesis is poorly
represented. Let me expand on that: there's a gap in the material
between chapters 8 and 12 (which is to say nothing survives of
chapters 9, 10 and 11); the Genesis Apocryphon stops at 15:4 and
there is nothing more of Genesis surviving until 17:12; we have only
the latter parts of chapters 18 and 19; chapter 20 is not preserved;
and he wants to make a big deal about absence of chapter 14! Yet
he admits it is in fact preserved. From there he wants to try and
explain away preservation of chapter 14 in the GA by resorting to
the document's use of the phrase El Elyon. Translation: "It's there
and it's staring me in the face, but I don't want to deal with it."


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.
Psalm 86:11




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